How GPUs Are Changing the Data Center

How GPUs Are Changing the Data Center

by Stephanie Faris on Tuesday, February 21 12:00

At one time, intense image processing was relegated to video gaming, where innovators
consistently challenged the limits of electronics. But today's consumers use their devices to
watch videos and interact with apps, making Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) an integral part
of the most popular computers and mobile devices on the market.
In recent years, GPUs have also made their way into the data center environment, giving
network administrators the power they need to handle today's bandwidth-intensive activities.
As one analyst explained, GPUs are ideal for data analytics, which have become one of the
biggest challenges for IT administrators. Businesses need to work with volumes of data on a
regular basis, requiring server teams to create a framework to support it.

GPU Defined

GPUs date back to 1999, when NVIDIA created the GeForce 256 GPU, which could make billions
of calculations per second. However, graphics chips have been used in video games since the
1970s. NVIDIA's chip simply took image processing to the next level, and from that point
forward, the processor became popular in 3-D graphics. The single-chip processor is specifically
designed to render digital images much more efficiently than Central Processing Units (CPUs).
Now processor manufacturers are advertising GPU-optimized server solutions, built to handle
all of the complex operations businesses employ today. These solutions can push servers to
operate at peak speed without consuming additional resources, making them ideal for data
centers that cater to multiple clients. Over time, though, GPU-optimized components will
become the norm even for businesses that have on-site servers, especially since an increasing
number of companies will be incorporating data science into the decisions they make every
day.

Moving into the Data Center

The biggest argument for GPUs in the data center is efficiency. One two-way node with four
interconnected NVIDIA P100s can offer the same processing power a network administrator
would get from 32 CPU-based nodes. Not only does this free up space in server rooms and data
centers, but it also brings a substantial cost savings to administrators. For data centers that
serve multiple businesses, this is a cost savings they can pass onto customers. For businesses
that maintain their own on-site server rooms, this reduced cost can bring a big relief to their
annual budgets.

Best of all, there are a growing number of applications that can benefit from GPU power at the
server level. This number is only going to continue to grow as software grows more
sophisticated. Eventually, so many applications will demand that type of power, businesses that
don't accommodate it will find that they're left behind. Additionally, once businesses realize
their network infrastructure has the scalability to handle those more intensive applications,
they'll realize they can invest in applications that are optimized for GPU.
GPUs can increase network performance while also saving money. As an end result, data
centers and server rooms will be able to better serve the professionals and consumers who
access them every day. For those server administrators who haven't already investigated the
benefits GPU can bring to their environment, now is a great time to research and learn more
about the technology.